In addition four of his campaign officials are connected with the group: Senators Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman, both campaign co-chairman, also both sit on the Vets for Freedom board of advisors. The group's executive director, Pete Hegseth, is on McCain's Virginia steering committee along with the group's treasurer, Wade Zirkle.

If McCain also asks these four men to leave the campaign, the challenge for him will be to explain he lavishly praised as a "wonderful organization" as recently as April 8.

Over the weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of McCain's top surrogates, laid the groundwork for McCain's criticism in a television interview in which he noted Obama's absence from Iraq and floated the idea that Obama and McCain should go together to be briefed by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Asked whether he'd be willing to take such a trip, McCain told the AP: "Sure. It would be fine." "I go back every few months because things are changing in Iraq," he said. McCain questioned whether Obama has ever been briefed by Petraeus. "I would also seize that opportunity to educate Senator Obama along the way."

And the Relevant Policy of the McCain campaign which should now disqualify McCain himself.

No person with a McCain Campaign title or position may participate in a 527 or other independent entity that makes public communications that support or oppose any presidential candidate.

The Republican lobby group Vets for Freedom is the 2006 equivalent of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the Republican 527 committee whose attack advertisements in battleground states helped sink John Kerry in the 2004 presidential race by smearing him as a phony war hero and a traitor to his country.

Vets for Freedom (VFF) made lame claims to be "non-partisan" when in early 2006 it first appeared out of the blue online and in op-ed pieces in the New York Times and other major papers and in TV interviews. An investigation of the group by citizen journalists at SourceWatch and by the Buffalo News blew the VFF claim of non-partisanship out of the water. For instance, the Buffalo News revealed in June that former White House flack Taylor Gross, who left Scott McClellan's office in 2005 to start his own PR firm, represented VFF and pitched them to papers as non-partisan journalists who would embed for these newspapers and report accurately and cheaply for them from Iraq. Now the camouflage has fallen completely off. Vets for Freedom has registered itself as a 527 committee and is going to run a full page advertisement in Connecticut's Hartford Courant on behalf of Joe Lieberman's renegade run for re-election to the US Senate as a 'stay the course in Iraq' candidate.

The Wall Street Journal reports that VFF is being handled now by Republican strategist Dan Senor and that it "hopes to run other print and radio ads in the fall, and is also planning on campaign door-to-door for Mr. Lieberman and holding a rally on his behalf."

Connecticut is a heavily Democratic state, and normally any Democrat who wins the nomination would be expected to cruise to victory in the general election this November. However, Lieberman's refusal to bow out after losing to Ned Lamont in last Tuesday's primary creates a window of opportunity for a Republican victory. By supporting Lieberman, the Republicans hope to split the Democratic vote so that their candidate can get elected. This strategy is bound to produce an ugly and divisive political campaign, another advantage for the Republican cause nationally as Tony Snow and others in the White House paint pro-peace Democrats as a party of appeasement in the war on terror.

VFF political ties have been cited by those concerned about its political goals:

The VFF website is hosted in a server owned by Campaign Solutions, a subsidiary of the Donatelli Group, a firm that previously worked for the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee.<2> One critic of the VFF said that VFF's privacy notice on its website included, at one point, the following: "We may from time to time share the information our visitors provide with other Republican candidates and other like-minded organizations."<3>

Zirkle was a regional field director for Republican Jerry Kilgore's unsuccessful 2005 campaign for governor of Virginia.<4>

"The Bull Moose" a blog sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council, claims Zirkle as a "friend," in an April 2006 posting.

A "key Vets for Freedom adviser is Bill Andresen, a Democrat and former chief of staff to embattled Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut." <25>

For America's veterans, 2005 was like the movie " Groundhog Day." Day after day in Congress we have had to fight for the health care and benefits that our veterans have earned, but after every minor victory we seemingly have to fight the battle again the next day against the forces of resistance.

John Kerry addresses the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners today in Washington, DC. The focus of his speech was his “KidsFirst” Health Care Plan. The following is the text of his speech as prepared for delivery and received by The Democratic Daily:

Many people seem curious or even skeptical why United States Senators believe it's so important to take a stand against the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court -- why we're willing to take on a fight that conventional wisdom suggests we will lose.

The reality is simple. We care about the future of our country.

We care about the millions of Americans who expect Congress to stand up and fight for their rights and their freedoms, and we also know that the Supreme Court, again and again, is the battlefield on which those rights and freedoms are decided.

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